The first tourist in space was Dennis Tito, a multimillionaire from the United States who paid 20 million dollars for a trip to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz rocket in 2001. Since July 2021 Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has already taken 31 people on a flight outside the Earth's atmosphere, including the company owner.

An hour's flight aboard a New Shepard rocket owned by Blue Origin costs between $200,000 and $300,000, almost 100 times cheaper than two decades ago. One of its 30 passengers to date was British businessman Hamish Harding, who died recently in the Titan submarine disaster.

On 29 June the Unity spacecraft of Virgin Galactic, owned by Englishman Richard Branson, made its first successful commercial voyage, almost two years after its competitor Blue Origin started operating. The 72-minute flight involved three Italian scientists who carried out weightlessness tests during the flight.

There are another 800 people who have already purchased Virgin Galactic flights waiting in line. They have paid between $250,000 and $450,000 for them. Unity takes a maximum of five passengers and technologically can only take off once a month, so it will take a while to unload the queue. Virgin Galactic announced however, that it is going to introduce a new class of rocket in 2026. The company plans the new rocket to take off at least once a week.

"There's no way to make space travel good for planet Earth right now", Time Magazine wrote recently. We have written about atmospheric pollution from space rockets in the context of Elon Musk's SpaceX flights as well. Let’s not, however, delude ourselves that this fact can stop the development of space tourism.